Nice attack in 2016: Italy authorizes the extradition to France of a suspect

Italian justice has authorized the extradition to France of an Albanian suspected of providing a weapon to the perpetrator of the truck attack in Nice on July 14, 2016, the Italian agency AGI said.

Read also: Attack on the Basilica of Nice: the terrorist initially planned to carry out an attack in Paris

The Naples Court of Appeal (southern Italy) gave the green light on Thursday evening for the extradition of Endri Elezi, arrested on April 21 in Sparanise (Caserta, south) and who was the subject of a European mandate issued on April 27, 2020 by France. During the hearing, the 28-year-old Albanian, quoted by AGI, outright denied the charges against him: "

". Asked by AFP, the Naples Court of Appeal did not respond.

On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had darkened with a truck on the crowd gathered by the sea on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on the occasion of the National Day, killing 86 people. According to the French authorities, Endri Elezi, nicknamed "

", allegedly provided the assailant with an assault rifle, coming from a burglary and hidden in a forest on the heights of Nice, through another Albanian. .

This Italian court decision comes after the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed in March the referral to the assizes of eight people, including Endri Elezi, in this case.

Since the investigation is over and the trial is already scheduled, more information will have to be ordered, in particular so that the Albanian is questioned and submitted to the compulsory psychiatric and psychological examinations, before being able to be possibly judged, explained a judicial source. Frenchwoman during her arrest.

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel having been shot dead at the wheel of the truck, the special assize court will examine the responsibilities of members of his entourage and of intermediaries involved in the circuit of the weapons intended for him.

Endri Elezi is implicated for "

"And violation of the laws on weapons", in the part of the investigation dealing with arms trafficking. The judicial information could not demonstrate for five suspects who supplied weapons to Lahouaiej Bouhlel that they had been informed of his planned attack. The terrorist qualification was therefore ruled out and they are sent back to the assizes for common law offenses. The trial, which should last several weeks at least, will take place at the Paris courthouse, after that of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in the French capital and its surroundings.